3 min read November 2022 — In an interview with Invest:, Kenneth Holmen, president & CEO of CentraCare, discussed the key milestones during the past year, strategies to recruit and retain talent, what makes the Twin Cities a great market to be in and the outlook for the healthcare industry in the near future.
What have been some of the key milestones and highlights for CentraCare in the past year?
We have been fortunate with the amount of collaboration that exists within our state. Our staff are resilient and even though we continue to face significant workforce shortages, they are fully engaged in their purpose. Additionally, coming out of the pandemic healthcare finances have been challenging. We are managing these challenging headwinds and approaching the future with a sense of optimism and hope. Public Health Pandemics, like the one we have just been through, though challenging, have a way to pull people together. We saw that in our organization. We serve a very large geography of 40,000 square miles and around 700,000 Minnesotans, so the ability of our team members to work closely across our footprint has been an important factor during the pandemic.
What are some strategies that you are using to recruit and retain talent?
Addressing our workforce issues is a multimodal strategy. We are working with our current employees for retention. We recognize that how people view their job is changing significantly and we are looking to address their issues in whatever form that might be. Additionally, we are looking at ways to recruit more effectively. It is very challenging because there is a small pool to recruit from, which is why we are trying to be more creative in how we do our work. That means having people work at the top of their license and technology-enabled work; we have rapidly deployed a digital strategy.
We are working to get further upstream on the pipeline. In the past, we were not primarily involved in education. Now, we are actively involved in it. We are in the process of building a medical school and we are working with neighboring colleges and their nursing programs. We have started residency programs and more. Recently, we hired a former high-school principal to work with high school students earlier and introduce them to healthcare careers.
How is CentraCare working to meet the market demand and consumer needs?
Healthcare is very personal; it is one of the most important elements in a person’s life. Our purpose statement is to listen, serve, guide and heal because health is everything. The engagement with our patients and customers is central to what we do, so, how do we make that interface seamless, especially considering that most people acknowledge that they have had a bad experience in healthcare. It is important to acknowledge that the cost of healthcare is important to all. It has some high-level drivers. One of these drivers is the cost of the “stuff” that we use — from Band-Aids to antibiotics. All of our vendors are for-profit companies, so they have expectations of profit margins. That cost is passed to us and then to our patients. We must consider that the cost of all this material is high and growing rapidly due to supply chain disruption and inflation.
The second driver in addition to cost is resource utilization — we do too many procedures and use too much stuff. The historical way that we do our work is primed for us to do a lot of procedures, and our ability to adopt best practices and evidence-based guidelines is crucial.
Lastly, our “people” and “workforce” costs are very high. We need to adopt new care models which improve our efficiency. Healthcare has many disruptors who are anxious and capable of providing healthcare and new models.
What are some of the characteristics of the Twin Cities that make it a great market for CentraCare?
The culture of Minnesota is relatively unique. We have several large health systems that compete but also collaborate and there is a sense of shared purpose among us. Our business community have been good partners to provide and design healthcare for our employees, customers and communities. For example, The Minnesota Business Partnership consists of the larger organizations in the state across all industries and its members share a goal of growing and advancing the region on behalf of our customers and citizens. Our educational institutions are educating their students with a sense of community engagement, which is great for the overall ecosystem and healthcare is a priority. There is a broad sense of community engagement that permeates our population and guides our political leaders.
What is your outlook for CentraCare for the next two to three years?
Workforce shortages are going to continue to be an issue for a long time. There are several macro-demographic issues: the country has an aging population, and we have more people over the age of 65 than those under 18, which is a first in American history. Birthrates have been declining. Immigration is a challenging conversation and we need a consensus on immigration policy to create a future workforce dynamic. We know that immigrants, as they become assimilated, and their future generations, are active contributors to our society.
Macroeconomics including tax policy and the role of private insurance continue to be tension points. The key question in this dilemma is how much can the government afford to pay for healthcare and how much are employers willing to pay for healthcare. There have been many conversations about Medicare for all but the blunt reality is that the government already pays more than 50% of healthcare. It might not be an official policy but the role of the government is enormous and will only increase as the population ages. And how the private insurance market responds is still unknown.
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